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Memory Alpha talk:Nitpick
I think we, as a community, have decided that nitpicks should be removed from the articles (please correct me if I'm wrong). I've noticed a number of nitpicks/bloopers scattered among the Background section of quite a few articles, especially the TOS ones (many of them end in one or more exclamation points (!), which I personally find annoying and "fannish", not at all professional). What's the consensus on items like this? I can provide examples, if necessary, but just scan some of the TOS Background sections and you'll run across one or two per episode. -- Renegade54 18:09, 15 June 2006 (UTC) :I guess the deciding factors are * A) if its anything concrete -- able to be seen (a dropped phaser, a broken set, a visible teamster snacking behind the edge of the turbolift door, etc), then its more of a production note, and we can keep it, as a blooper, etc * 2) if its something stated with the correct tone: i guess we'd prefer "There is a visible Nike logo on the duffel bag" as opposed to "This is the biggest mistake ever! You can see writing that wasn't supposed to be there! This is Rick Berman's fault!" or "What took him so long? Was he taking a crap?!" :Even in these cases, note -- "they shouldn't have been able to beam through the shields" probably is more relevant to shields or transporter than it is to "Relics" -- which is why technical nitpicks, plot nitpicks, etc, go outside of the episode page. (if Scotty remembered something wrong, put it on the page about Scotty, not the episode he did it in...) -- Captain M.K.B. 18:17, 15 June 2006 (UTC) ::I personnally agree, but I think you will find others get "hostile" if you try to remove them. There was one that came up that read something like "If you watch Shatner in this one scene, you see him mouth 'What the F---'!" I removed it, both because I doubted its validity (censors were a lot stricter back then, I find it hard to believe that got passed them), and I thought it was not very professional looking. Well, I preceeded to get my user page vandalized by the person who originally put it up. I eventually put it back, somewhat reworded. --OuroborosCobra 18:19, 15 June 2006 (UTC) :in cases like that, move it to the episode's talk page, maybe even ask the user to help MA and clarify what they meant, point out it might belong on William Shatner's page instead of the episodes, or just say its plain unusable. -- Captain M.K.B. 18:24, 15 June 2006 (UTC) ::Well, I have to question both the professionalism and the maturity of anyone who would do that, which in turn makes me doubt the veracity and accuracy of that person's entries. Grrrr. I'm not really concerned about one person's reactions, as long as we (as a community) have a consensus we're working from. It's not that I don't find bloopers interesting - quite the opposite, I always watch the blooper or outtake clips on DVDs, no matter what show or movie - it's just that if we're treating Star Trek in a "scholarly" manner, there has to be a better way of dealing with them than scattering them throughout the episode background notes (or worse, putting them in their own section). And I agree, if we do have them, they need to be worded such that the "snigger" factor is reduced. They should be of the type "hmmmm, that's an interesting goof, I must have missed that" rather than "can you believe how stupid they were!!!" Or something like that. -- Renegade54 18:32, 15 June 2006 (UTC) Here are a few from Where No Man Has Gone Before, some of which I'd previously edited to tone down a bit: *Their crew files show that Mitchell and Dehner were born in cities called "Delman" and "Eldman." No doubt the property master never thought TV resolution would make these readable! *The communications officer behind Kirk at the end of this episode appears to have his head down on his console, sleeping! *Could the "little blonde lab technician" Mitchell mentioned be Carol Marcus? *A clever bit of film trickery allows the elevator ride of Mitchell, Kirk and Spock to look like an actual ride from one deck to another without having to rely on editing. A gray wall is placed outside the door when Mitchell jumps in, which hides the bridge set. After the doors close, the wall is removed by the stage crew, and voila! seconds later, we are magically on the bridge. There are others in the same episode that might be candidates for relocation as well. Here's another from Return of the Archons: *In one of the most famous bloopers in the series, Christopher Held (Lindstrom) is beaned by a softball-sized prop rock while escaping the Festival-enraged crowd, but keeps running, so as not to ruin the take. Fans often misremember Mr. Leslie as the one hit. Amusing enough, this is just after Held's character had been clobbered with a large piece of wood! -- Renegade54 18:38, 15 June 2006 (UTC) :Wow, didn't know there was a "most famous" blooper in the series. I suppose that is the type of thing we are trying to weed out. --OuroborosCobra 18:59, 15 June 2006 (UTC) ::There seem to be a number of "most famous" bloopers: ::*In one of the series' most famous bloopers, a line from Balok warning the crew they had one minute left was not recorded, leaving Sulu to comment, "I knew he would" in response to nothing. The preview has an unused cut of Balok saying, "We grant you one minute" that could be modified and dubbed into the episode. - from The Corbomite Maneuver ::*This episode contains one of the most well-recorded bloopers in the series: during the final scene between Guinan and La Forge (set in the restored timeline), Geordi is still wearing the uniform from the alternate timeline. - from Yesterday's Enterprise ::*Perhaps the most-noted blooper in TOS occurs when Shatner knocks his phaser off his belt while smashing the glass on Khan's hibernation unit. De Kelley can be seen looking at the phaser on the floor and almost reaching to pick it up. After destroying the set piece, it was probably decided it would be prohibitively time-consuming to film the scene again. - from Space Seed ::I guess it all depends on your perspective... heh -- Renegade54 19:34, 15 June 2006 (UTC) No Nitpicks/bloopers Should not be removed I think that unless Nitpickes/bloopers get thier own page that there is no reason that the nitpick/blooper should not be where the episode profile is. I admire the fan who picks apart the seris. It makes more stuff for us 'Trekies' to try to justify or correct. In ending the Nitpickes/bloopers should stay where they are... Captain Wall::: 23:38, 15 June 2006 (UTC) :Its a question of appropriateness. If you find a mistake with how a laser works, note it on the page about the laser. Its really stupid to allow people to add this information where it doesnt belong. -- Captain M.K.B. 23:41, 15 June 2006 (UTC) I think that people are not looking for how a laser made a mistake in a episode. but it would be nice to know. Can blooper/nitpick not be added in the triva section or lacking that a new artical added to show that this episode had a blooper/nitpick? You know it is important to see how Star trek in flawd in some ways and that if it made a mistake it only makes it more real??? Captain Wall::: 03:13, 16 June 2006 (UTC) :I am actually changing my opinion on this. You guys have convinced me that it is good having these bloopers/nitpicks in the episode articles. I think we might want to consider making a new section in the articles for them. Also, they need to be well written. They can't all be like "in one of the most memorable" or "OMG dID yOu SeE tHAt!" --OuroborosCobra 03:19, 16 June 2006 (UTC) In Honor of this page I think that if you want to add a Nitpick/Blooper They should be added in a new section entitled Production Errors . If you agree sign this petition. Captain Wall::: 03:24, 16 June 2006 (UTC) *Bloopers and nitpicks aren't too bad all things considered. Having said that, most "nitpicks" are addressed on non-episode pages. Bloopers or "mistakes" should be rolled into the Background Information sections, possibly into a subsection (as some episodes have the BG Info broken down into Trivia, Cast Trivia, Production, Timeline, etc). I dislike calling the section Nitpicks and Bloopers though, and signing a petition here is a bit silly for that. Perhaps naming it something like "Production Errors" would be a bit more professional and would encourage people to ensure that the text suits that. -- Sulfur 03:30, 16 June 2006 (UTC) ::::::I think "Production notes" would be more professional -- the whole point of removing nitpicks is to avoid emphasizing whether they were truly "errors" or not, as quirky staging has always been one of Trek's themes -- so how could you call it an "error"? -- that's the whole thrust of this discussion. -- Captain M.K.B. 23:32, 16 June 2006 (UTC) *Good call. I like that much better. It was early for me when I wrote that, so my brain couldn't come up with a better name. :) -- Sulfur 00:40, 17 June 2006 (UTC) A New Section In An Episode's Listing for Nitpicks/Bloopers Should Be Entitled Production Error's Captain Wall::: 03:24, 16 June 2006 (UTC) :oppose, call it "production notes instead" -- Captain M.K.B. 23:32, 16 June 2006 (UTC) I don't know if anyone has the power to do this on such an estabilished wiki, but I personally would create a namespace 'Nits' or something, and allow episodes to have a "Nits:A Matter Of Time" page which would have it's own discussion page, and allow nitpicking to have it's own venue while allowing discussion on it as well, and not interfering with the encyclopedic nature of the regular Article (Just like articles have talk pages to discuss the content of the article, they could have nit pages to evaluate the validity of the episodes). That's just my opinion though. I think plot consistancy is an important element of a franchise as big as Trek and if a fan thinks "Hey wait. I don't get it, why didn't they just..." it is sometimes nice to see that other people have thought of the same issue with the plot and that it's accepted as a nit in the community. TheHYPO 21:16, 10 September 2006 (UTC) ::As you correctly pointed out, Memory Alpha is trying to be a good Encyclopedia about Star Trek - not an all-purpose Trek site. As an encyclopedia, we're trying to collect facts, not opinions. I strongly believe that allowing such things as random "nitpick discussions", even more with a separate namespace created for that purpose, would just detract from that goal. -- Cid Highwind 15:15, 11 September 2006 (UTC) :::I second what Cid just said. As another note, in many of the nitpicks that I have seen, there have been alternate explanations that make them not nitpicks. --OuroborosCobra talk 15:17, 11 September 2006 (UTC) ::::I agree, in old school Marvel comics readers we called this "No Prizing". Basically, explain why an apparent error might not be an error after all. While these shouldn't be listed in the formal information, where errors are listed viable explanations should be included. When there are competing explanations, I guess go with Occam's Razor. --JCoyote 20:16, 22 September 2006 (UTC) :::::Get those nitpicks out of our encyclopedia(s)! Those are good for nothing - even the obvious ones because you could nit-pick any detail beginning from the exterior sounds of a starship in space over Spock's rising eyebrow (Alas! An emotional reaction, Bones!) to Starfleet phaser being an all-purpose tool. :::::If someone wants to point out errors on Trek - I guess Wikia has some place to start a new Wikia. Memory Beta "just" started to have a place for all non-canon trek fiction - why not create sort of a Memory Gamma there would be even the opportunity to counter those nitpicks and give some explanation a canonical encyclopedia such als MA can't (or better shouldn't). 21:51, 19 May 2007 (UTC) Decided? So does this mean nitpicks and such is decided that they aren't accepted on the wiki? What about a page about them? Isn't nitpicking sort of a famous thing in Star Trek anyway? --Hawku 18:12, 28 November 2007 (UTC) :By that logic, it's famous for every show and movie out there. According to item #7 at MA:NOT... yes. They're not accepted. They were deemed to not be encyclopedic. As such... No nitpicks. Especially since, as Marvel Comics proved back in the day with their No-Prize awards, any nit can be explained away given sufficient thinking time. 'Nuff Said! :) -- Sulfur 18:22, 28 November 2007 (UTC)